They look good but I wouldn't keep them in a community pot and I would take them out of the peat. Keep the unrooted cutting's soil from getting wet until they have several good size leaves which is an indication that roots have formed. That goes for all the unrooted cuttings, regardless of the potting mix. Good luck this time. Hopefully next winter won't be so damn cold in FL!!!! Being in Tampa you'll still have to protect them from cold temps so I'd keep them in pots. You can sink the pots in the garden and lift them before the cold temps arrive. They've come back from the roots but if that keeps happening you'll never get blooms. Once a tip dies back you lose the chance for an info on that branch and have to wait for new branches develop.

Yup. It is a black racer. They are a good snake. There is a blue variety that is gorgeous. We have the black ones here in Ky, the blue ones in Northern Indiana. Havent seen the opposite vareity at either place.

I second Christie (all of them, every character) and Penny. Also, two contemporaries of Christie are Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers. Heyer was also a contemporary-her mysteries are not Victorian, they are of the time she wrote them. Her romances are Victorian. The two are very different. Other authors I would recommend with your friend's caveats in mind: Elizabeth Peters-the Amelia Peabody series-Edwardian archeologists P.D. James-contemporary, sometimes gritty but not raunchy Catherine Aird-Scotland Yard detecive who grows roses as a hobby Anne Perry-she writes two-I like the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series best, but her William Monk series is very popular too. The link below is a gold mine of information. You can find series lists in order, read-alikes, recommendations, publication information....I use it all the time to hlep patrons at the library, and for myself because I like to read series in order. Here is a link that might be useful: Stop, You're Killing Me

I have finally caught up with all the mysteries available so far by Stephen Booth. He is an English author whose books take place in the Peak District. I really like his writing style and his characters - a local policeman Ben Cooper & a female transplant from Birmingham named Diane Fry. I use the web site Fantastic Fiction a lot and saw that he had other books available in England and found that it takes approx 2 years for his books to get over here. He has a really lovely web site with a slide show of the Peak District and I wrote to him (email) about the 2 yr delay and was delighted to get a response from him within a couple of hours-I was impressed! He said he changed publishers and this new one was still trying to catch up...so I will have to wait til sometime in 2008 to get the next one in the series. I recommend his books for those that enjoy English mysteries. Pat